Connections

(Inspired by the book "Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom.) The book is a fictional narrative about how we're all connected in many ways that we don't or can't understand.

Because today would have been his birthday, I'm starting this story with my best friend of over 30 years, Tim Stone. We met because he lived just down the hall in the same apartment complex and happened to leave something out in the open one afternoon.

During the summer of 1978 I was working with Dan Otterpohl and a couple other guys framing houses in the Pinery subdivision south of Parker, CO. Some of us were looking for some smoke but we weren't having any luck finding any. Coming home from work one afternoon, as we were walking up to our apartment, one of the guys happened to notice through an open window a big bag of weed sitting on a shelf in an apartment a couple doors down from ours. After discussing the situation amongst ourselves, I went back and knocked on the door where my friend had seen the bag. Tim came to the door, I negotiated some sharing and a new friendship began.

Tim and I liked a lot of the same things; good humor and a good laugh, a love of adventure and the thrill of the unknown, rock climbing, camping and photography. We began to spend a lot of weekends climbing, bouldering or camping somewhere and we became inseparable to the point of becoming roommates at a couple of different apartments.

A few years later, around 1982, Tim was living with his brother Matt after Matt's wife was brutally murdered by a co-worker in a workplace robbery. Matt had hired a babysitter/nanny to take care of his two young boys while he was at work. After a climbing trip somewhere, Tim and I always sorted our climbing gear in his basement and that's where I met Jennifer, Matt's babysitter and my future wife. She was always begging us to take her rock climbing with us so one day we did, and so began another long chapter of my life.

Through Tim I met my best friends and lifetime climbing buddies, Dana Cline and John Shulteis. Although he's no longer with us and I couldn't see it at the time, Tim Stone was and will always be my Colorado connection in that he was the common thread, woven across the fabric of time, to many lifelong friends that I cherish today. Tim, I miss you so much.

One Pair of Boots

I’ve been climbing frozen waterfalls for nearly thirty years now. The first few years were characterized by a lack of individual equipment because ice climbing requires special gear; crampons for your boots and hammer-like picks for each hand, not to mention the usual mountaineering stuff like a rope, a harness, ‘biners, slings, etc.

Crampons are the claw-like devices which attach to the bottom of your boots and allow you to stand or climb on frozen snow or ice without slipping. There are two types of ice crampons, flexible and rigid. Flexible crampons were originally designed for glacier travel, moving across low-angled surfaces of frozen snow. They have a hinge in the middle so that they can bend with the sole of your boots. Rigid crampons, like the name implies, have no hinge, do not bend or flex and like ski boots, are uncomfortable to walk in. Rigid crampons were specifically designed for steeply angled or vertical ice so that a person could sink only the front points into the ice or snow and still stand comfortably.

In the late seventies my brother-in-law gave me a pair of leather hiking boots he bought on vacation in Switzerland while he was in the US Navy. Turns out for some reason these boots had a wooden midsole which made them perfect for rigid-style ice crampons. Most hiking boots are unsuitable for rigid crampons because the soles flex & bend to some degree. The only other boots available for such a task at the time were the plastic mountaineering boots that expedition members wore on trips to Denali and the Himalayas. Their outrageous cost prohibited any of us ‘normal people’ from owning a pair.

John, Tim, Dave, Dana and I, along with Peg, Michael, Greg and others soon began to spend nearly every winter weekend on the ice somewhere in Colorado. I would set up a suitable anchoring system at the top of the waterfall, either to established bolt anchors or with rock gear. Depending on the location, sometimes I used bushes or trees for anchors. Once set, I rappelled back to the bottom where everyone eagerly awaited their chance to try something new or improve their existing skills. I would sit down on a rock, unlace & take off my boots and someone else would step into them, hook into the rope and start climbing.


After a few seasons we all acquired our own set of tools and crampons. With a huge increase in the popularity of ice climbing in the early 1990’s, getting the opportunity to climb an ice waterfall on the weekend soon became an issue of who got there first. Over the years, we proved to the Colorado ice climbing community time and again that we were the most dedicated climbers, leaving our nice warm beds and partners at 2 or 3 am (oh-dark thirty) so that we could be the first ones on the ice before sun-up. Occasionally we let latecomers join us, if they seemed nice enough. Otherwise they got to sit and wait, sometimes for hours, till we were done hacking up the ice with our tools.

Even though the original group has splintered apart for various reasons like advancing age, injuries from other sports and geography we still keep in contact with one another. Protecting someone on the other end of a climbing rope quickly builds a bond between those two people which is not easily broken. We lost the first member of our group, Dave Brooks, when he was killed in a tanker truck accident in California in 2006.

Now, as I sat at the memorial service for Tim this past week I realized that half of the people who came did so because of a bond that had been forged over nearly three decades and how it had all started with that one pair of boots.

I reflected back on all the adventures and good times we had shared together over the years and I realized just how amazingly fortunate I’ve been to have that kind of lasting bond with so many wonderful people.

Toxic People and Trolls Under the Bridge

I just got laid off from a temporary design position that instead turned out to be simple manufacturing labor and I can’t remember the last time I felt such overwhelming joy in leaving a job. The owner and CEO was easily the meanest and most toxic person I have ever met in my whole life. I have never seen one person take so much delight in making other people miserable and be so successful at it.

Mean people suck!

There is a Chinese saying that venom comes from the head and it was certainly true at this company. The owner felt that people were just meat that she could exploit at will, while paying the very minimum because as she explained, she could fire whoever she wanted and simply put an ad on craigslist and have two hundred new people to choose from the very next day. Her evil attitude and demeaning contempt for everyone else permeated the very air like a sickening stench and contaminated everything in the office and manufacturing area. Her negativity trickled down to everyone who worked for her and it was evident in their faces, their defeated spirits and their actions. For some reason that I couldn’t understand, it was easier to endure the misery of working there than it was to go get a decent job somewhere else.

By the end of the second week I was almost overcome by my own negative attitudes and self-talk. I had been reading books on leadership at lunch and a quote by Viktor Frankl stuck in my mind. He said while he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, that one day, standing stark naked, hungry and filthy dirty before the Nazi guards, he realized, “No matter what they do to me, I still am in control of my feelings and how I choose to respond to them and to life.” That’s when it hit me that the purpose of me being there wasn’t about my skill-set; it had everything to do with mastering my self-talk and being in control of my own thoughts. I resolved right then and there that she could jerk me around like a circus pony or shit on me however she wanted but it wasn’t going to affect the good attitude I held within me. Some days I had to stop my thoughts several times each minute, hundreds of times an hour and replace the negative, self-defeating thoughts with a positive focus and a smile.

At break time and whenever I had the opportunity to talk to someone I started to share what I had learned with the other temporary workers. I explained that they were in charge of their own feelings and that no one could make them feel worthless without their permission. I also convinced them that the best thing they could possibly do was to go find another job and then quit as soon as possible. Ultimately, I learned a valuable lesson: in every negative situation or environment, no matter how bad it might seem, there is something positive to be learned. You might have to dig quite a bit to find it but it is there.

From my brief encounter with this nasty woman I will always remember that there are mean and nasty people in the world who enjoy being that way and like trolls under the bridge, they may want to bring me down but - I am in control of my own thoughts and I will choose every time to not let them ruin my day. :)

The Dream Network

No, it’s not a new channel on your cable provider’s lineup and we’re not talking about some new-fangled thing on YouTube. Motivational speakers have been telling us for decades that “we become what we think about on a regular basis.” You don’t “catch” depression and you don’t “catch” happiness; you “create” it by the thoughts you put into your mind. Every day you must carefully CHOOSE what you read, listen to, the people you hang out with, etc. and filter out or eliminate the things that aren’t positive and encouraging.

If you catch yourself thinking about unhappiness or worrying about ill health or adversity, (I like to call it the “Gloom & Doom” Channel), “change the channel” and think about what you want to happen instead (the Dream Network). Believe that GOOD things are possible and will happen. Expectations have a way of coming true, whether they’re positive or negative.

Our achievements in life have always been limited by what we believe to be possible. When you focus your attention on what you want, otherwise hidden opportunities have a way of presenting themselves. The ninja of feudal Japan even had a special name for it; “kuji” was the study of focused intention, where thought, word and deed were combined to remove the gap that separates intention from successful action. Once the kuji technique was mastered, the ninja supposedly had the power to create physical reality by means of his intention alone. Focused intention became completed action itself; cause blended with effect until there was no longer a distinction.

What’s on your “Dream Network”? When’s the last time you watched it? How good is the reception in your head? Are you getting a clear picture, is it fuzzy, or God forbid, just a static channel?

-------

Encouragement: Free to give away, priceless to receive. – Author unknown

-------

Wanted: Mental TV Technician. I think my tuner needs repair as it seems to be drifting back to the “Gloom & Doom” Channel all the time. Every few minutes I have to manually switch it back to the “Dream Network”.

PBJ

Refrigeration isn't something that I take for granted like most "insiders". Any food items that I carry with me in my vehicle have to withstand the heat of summer because I don't carry a cooler. I'd be re-filling it with ice on a daily basis if I did and that would be a nuisance.

My mom called the other day and asked me what I've been eating. I told her about all the fast food places that I've been to lately and her first comment was, "Gee, that's got to be expensive. You should go to the store and get some lunchmeat and cheese or something." I had to remind her that if I didn't eat it that day, that whatever I bought would go bad on me and I've never been thrilled about the prospect of eating spoiled food. Last spring, when I was still living indoors, I went to a fast food place late at night and had some chicken nuggets left over which I ate the next morning. They had already gone bad even though it never exceeded 50 degrees overnight in my truck and I spent the next 36 hours driving the white porcelain bus. (You know, the one in your bathroom.) I won't be eating any unrefrigerated leftovers again, ever!


Other than some assorted canned goods, the only food I carry with me is a jar of peanut butter, a squeeze bottle of grape jam and a loaf of bread. I used to really like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but after eating what seems like a couple thousand of them this summer, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, my lip curls up in an unpleasant, disagreeable snarl every time I think about the idea. I've decided instead to shop just for the day and only buy what I can eat without leftovers.

Kickin' back

Kickin' back is another one of those things that "insiders" definitely take for granted. Or I guess you could say that it's one of those benefits you get from paying rent or a mortgage. It's pretty difficult to find a place to chill when you're limited to parks and parking lots. Parks are nice but you can't sit there and drink a few beers. I refuse to drink and drive so I don't have many good options when I'd like to just kick back and relax. Sitting in a vehicle drinking beer is just not a good idea either because of Colorado's open container law. I'd hate to have a few beers and then have to explain to some law enforcement officer that I live in my truck and don't really have any place to go.

Taking a nap is also another activity that's hard to accomodate. I spend a lot of time at local libraries and sometimes I get a little sleepy after doing a lot of reading. I'd like to be able to just put the book down and rest my eyes for a little while but I don't do it because I wouldn't want a library patron to jostle me awake and tell me that I'm snoring. It's hard to take a nap at a friend's house because it's not very social. My truck isn't comfortable enough to take a nap in the front seat either. A few times I've crawled in the back and just laid down because I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Hope, a Higher power & lottery tickets

Where does my hope come from? My hope comes from the Lord our God who provides for all of us. I think it says that in the Bible somewhere too but I'm not good at quoting scripture.

A few days ago I was worried because I only had $3 left in my pocket. I prayed that God would provide an answer for me. I got the idea to purchase a $1 lottery ticket and in spite of having a consistent losing streak when it comes to such things, I actually won my dollar back. I decided to buy another one and see what happened. I actually won $21 on the next ticket.

Good thing, because when I got back in my truck the oil warning light on the dash immediately came on. Without winning that lottery ticket I wouldn't have been able to buy the one quart of oil necessary to keep me on the road. I contemplated the cosmic coincidences of that sort of thing randoming happening on its own and decided that He is still looking out for me somehow.

So, now it's got me wondering, Is God down with gambling or does He just use whatever tools he has handy at the time to accomplish His divine purpose, kinda like when the tool in your hand can become a hammer at the appropriate moment?

Related humor:
A man prayed every day, "God, please help me win the lottery today."
Finally after several months, God spoke to him, in a booming voice, "Meet me halfway on this, Bob. Buy a ticket."